Backstretch
by kittenkatpaw
Summary: Lennie and Ed investigate a murder at a racetrack barn while Jack saddles himself with an old acquaintance. Sorry for the pun. :P A sort-of sequel to "Daylight," though both stories stand alone. Rating for language and graphic description of injury.
1. Chapter 1

_This fic should stand alone, but just to have all the background, you might want to first read my fic "Daylight" which is where the narrator is introduced. :)_

-#-

I really hate getting shot. It has to rank as one of my top three least favorite things, right up there with dental surgery and dealing with children. I hate it enough, in fact, that over the years I've gotten pretty good at avoiding it, 1996 notwithstanding.

However, she who lives by the sword….

I've led some very straightforward, "simple" missions that involved nothing more than playing bodyguard to some overpaid, overzealous politician. The job that laid me down, though-- there was nothing simple nor straightforward about it. When it all came down, we had about ten active shooters, and only four of them were my boys. I took two bullets in the abdomen and one in the lung, and went down like a rock. Woodson was on me in an instant and kept me from bleeding to death, but the real damage was done: one of the bastard bullets lodged in my spinal column.

My career days were instantly behind me.

I was lucky, and I knew it. As it was, I was hospitalized for over a month. My boys hung around for the first week or so, but Woodson and Jonesey got instant promotions on that bullet, and they could only stay out of the field for so long. I spent a couple of weeks alternately staring at the hospital ceiling and learning how to walk again with a bullet in the vertebrae. One hundred and one tons of fun.

About the fourth week, though, I got a very surprising visit-- a former "client" of ours, a district attorney whose life I had saved with-- coincidentally?-- three bullets of my own. He barged into my hospital room without so much as knocking. Remember me? he asked, grinning.

Jack, I replied, taking a few seconds to pull up a last name to go with the first. Jack McCoy.

He took over the chair next to the bed and sat there for the next three weeks.

I'd have gone crazy without him.

-#-

They couldn't remove the bullet, of course. That would have made my life far too simple, and simple has never been my style. They hemmed and hawed about what recovery they thought I might make, then stood around watching to see what actually happened. I did learn to walk again, very well. Sitting had become extremely interesting, with little lightning shots of pain arcing up and down my spine with both sitting and rising. But walking was a wonderful thing, and I was happy with that.

McCoy was very encouraging. "Get up. Now walk. Come on, try harder. I don't think you're trying." He very politely ignored the prolific amount of swearing I heaped on him during those weeks. I could see my daily progress under his tender mercies, but my temper was legendarily frayed.

"Don't you have a job?" I asked him that at least twice a day.

His answer was always the same: a shrug, and "I have a little bit of vacation coming."

I didn't have to ask him why he was taking such an interest in my recovery. If not for me, he would have been having this fun himself. Or not doing much of anything at all. Ever. By unspoken arrangement, we both tacitly ignored the incident that had led to our meeting and to this misplaced idea that he owed me something; I was with him when he went back to his apartment for the first time after the shooting. He took a full ten seconds to work up the nerve to walk through the door. He kept looking at the floor like he thought he could still see the bloodstains; I don't think he could, but I didn't try to tell him otherwise. It's certainly not my place to tell someone to readjust after having their would-be murderer blown all over their living room.

I do have to say that the hazmat cleaners in New York do a hellofa job. But then, I imagine they're pretty experienced.

Anyway, I sure wasn't going to be the one to bring the incident up in casual conversation. So we let it lay, and concentrated instead on making my feet and legs learn again to obey my brain.

The first time I fell, he was there to catch me. The first time I walked, really walked, he was there to smile and beam and wipe away the sweat and tell me to do it again.

He didn't owe me a goddamned thing.

-#-

When I was released from the hospital, I was alone. McCoy had a court date he couldn't move, so I called a cab and got myself a hotel room. I'd been asleep about a day and a half when a furious pounding at my door sent me grabbing for a gun I no longer carried. When I came to a little more, I limped to the door, expecting McCoy. It wasn't, though-- it was his friend, Detective Briscoe. I opened the door to him.

"Jack's been worried sick," he greeted me. "Hi. You look like hell."

I thanked him and tried to sit down. I'd stiffened up, though, from sleeping instead of moving, and shot back up again before I'd touched the couch. That wasn't a wise move either. Tears burned my eyes and the lightning scorched my back.

Briscoe didn't say a word; he just took one of my arms in his hand and supported my back with the other, and eased me down onto the couch. After a few shaky breaths on my part, he let me go. "You gonna be all right?"

I sniffed back a few remaining tears. "Yes. I am."

He smiled knowingly at me and propped a few pillows around, then started puttering around the room's little kitchenette. He found the wet bar and fixed me a "muscle relaxant," then settled down next to me with a cup of coffee. He offered to see me to bed, but I'd had enough of being prone and declined; he left me on the couch with the television remote and my bottle of pain pills nearby with a strong admonishment to wait until the booze wore off before I took any. I tried the tv, but the only thing even remotely worth watching was Rear Window, for which I was understandably not in the mood. I took up ceiling-staring again, and dozed off after a few minutes.

Not two hours after Briscoe left, McCoy showed up at my door. He yelled at me a little for not telling him where I was staying, then shut the hell up when he noticed all the pillows holding me upright. He still grumbled some, but not much; then he disappeared into the suite's bedroom. When he came back out, he was carrying my bag. I didn't have it in me to argue; and truthfully, I also didn't have it in me to be staying on my own. I let him usher me back to his apartment for the duration of my recovery. Thank god he hadn't driven his motorcycle.

First thing I noticed when we got there is that he'd had the carpet replaced. I wasn't terribly surprised. Before he swept half a dozen or so newspapers from the couch into the floor so I could sit down, I saw that they were all open to the rental sections. That did surprise me, a little; it's not like anyone _important_ got shot in here that night. Granted, I lost two of my boys in one of the building's stairwells, but here in the apartment…still, I didn't know what other violent deaths might haunt Jack McCoy, so I kept my opinions to myself about his desire to leave this place far behind. Who am I to say? I've waded through people I knew without having nightmares to pay for it; I don't think I'm the best judge of what a sane person can tolerate.

The next few weeks were actually blissfully, agonizingly dull. I adjusted to having a little more iron in my diet, so to speak; I learned better how to sit down and stand up, and walking was becoming less of a thought-provoking activity and more of the mindless action we so take for granted until we can't do it anymore. McCoy went back to work full time, and I became fairly well read on law as I searched endlessly for something to do. Then I found the stash of "real" books behind the law volumes-- he actually had a fairly good smattering of classics. I decided it couldn't hurt to brush up on my Shakespeare and Dickens. They had to be better than the law books. Smashed back behind Dickens, I found a couple of battered Agatha Christies. Those immediately went to the head of the "read me" list; at the same time I added them to the "interesting things I know about McCoy" file. That file was growing pleasingly complex.

Thus was spent the majority of my recovery. When I could really walk well again, I asked McCoy for a set of keys so I could leave the apartment during the day. I couldn't believe it when he told me no-- he didn't think I was ready to be out on my own. I tried to shout at him, which was a colossally bad idea, but we managed to have a nice knock-down drag-out anyway. End result, of course, was that he still refused to let me wander around alone.

So I waited until he was at work and called Briscoe.

Lennie's a great guy. Do anything for a friend, loyal, dependable. Tight-lipped. Had me home before eight every day. He kept a tight check on my schedule, always knew where I'd be and when; in fact, one day we only beat McCoy home by about twenty minutes-- apparently Lennie had somebody at Hogan Place alerting him to McCoy's comings and goings. Took good care of me.

That's how we happened to be together when he and his partner got the "Jolly" Roy case.

I shouldn't have been there, of course; but Lennie had just liberated me when his partner called him to the precinct. He hauled me along with him with every intention of dropping me off somewhere as soon as he was done. I sat at his desk while he and Detective Green spoke with their Lieutenant, and played with his pencils. I had the good makings of a No. 2 fort when they came back, hell on their faces. "What's up?" I asked him. Morbidly curious, that's me. The man's a homicide detective, for christ's sake. What did I think was up?

"Stiff at the racetrack," Lennie replied colorfully and succinctly. "We gotta go check it out."

"Can I help?"

Ed Green looked at me like I'd been recently released. Which I had been, but not from the asylum he obviously suspected. "Look, this is a police--"

"Yeah, I know. But I'm still official, and I do have some experience with murder scenes," I pointed out. Both were true-- I was still on government payroll, with a ticket to interfere anywhere I damned well pleased. I'd earned the thanks of a few people over the years, after all.

Lennie knew it, too. "Couldn't hurt," he decided, and I very quietly left with them. Truth is, I thought maybe I _could_ help; I'd half grown up at Fairheights Downs, walking hots for free. The trainers thought I was some horse-struck girl, willing to do the dirt work just for a chance to be close to the Thoroughbreds. While I had a great respect and admiration for the equine athletes, the actual matter was that the racetrack was more alive with character and activity than anywhere else I knew. I got a good education in human behavior that has served me well. Basically, people are freaks, and you'll see it all at a racetrack. This one was no different; we brushed through the crowd behind Lennie and Ed's badges, and I suppressed a grin. I could have believed any of these people were killers.

I love racetracks.

When we finally got to the crime scene, the body was still in place, bloodying up the straw of one of the stalls in an otherwise unremarkable track barn. The erstwhile equine occupant of said stall jigged nervously nearby where a short, solid girl held his lead rope, her eyes lowered but watching us. As Green started questioning the men in and around the stall, Briscoe headed for the girl, and I followed. She looked maybe eighteen, with the muscled arms of someone used to working with animals ten times bigger and heavier than they are. And this horse was big even for a Thoroughbred, and stood out in this crowd like a beacon; big, gray, and pissed as hell. Briscoe introduced himself to the girl at his shoulder.

She replied quietly. "Hi."

I read the brass nameplate on the stallion's halter: Ghost Dancer. "He a Native-bred?" I asked.

The girl's brown eyes lit like I'd offered her a million. "Yeah! You know Thoroughbreds?"

"Been to a track or two," I said. "Besides, he might as well have a pedigree tattooed on him." It was true enough-- seeing the name had only confirmed it for me. He might as well have _been_ Native Dancer-- he was the Dancer in color and width of chest, and certainly seemed to be the Dancer in temperament. Hell of a horse, Native Dancer-- would drag jockeys off his back with his teeth and rush the fence to attack a reporter, but let his old groom pull himself up by the stallion's long tail and ate around the kittens that the barn cat insisted on birthing in his manger. It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine a great-great-grandson bouncing nervously while never jostling his teenaged handler. 

"How's he holding up to the excitement?" Briscoe asked her.

The girl paled. "He'll be happier when everyone's gone."

"Yeah," Lennie agreed. I could almost hear him add, And he's not the only one. I agreed. "What's your name?"

"Sheri."

"Did you see anything--" Lennie began,but the girl shook her head quickly.

"There were people already swarming around when I got here. Dab gave me the Dancer to hold, to get him out of the way. I haven't even seen the b-body." She bit her bottom lip, like she was punishing it for stumbling.

Lennie took down her name and address, SOP stuff, and we headed back to the crowded stall. We came up beside Green, who glanced at us and started talking.

"Guy's a trainer," he said, gesturing at the body. "Somebody smashed his head in sometime early this morning, maybe between 3 and 4 a.m."

Green was right; the guy's head had been bashed in, quite thoroughly. The whole back and part of the top were gone, and his brain was a pulpy mess in the straw. The murder weapon, a sledge hammer, lay nearby. "Good lord."

"If it's too much for ya," one of the police officers present told me roughly, "then you shouldn't be here."

Briscoe spared the man a somewhat withering glance, then asked me, "What?"

"Well, why would this person so obviously want to get caught?" I asked. "I mean, leaving the murder weapon with the body? Leaving the body at the scene? And in a public place...this person is either entirely not a pro, or stupid beyond all belief." I knelt _very_ carefully behind the body, taking a good look at the massive trauma to the back of the head. "And they really, really didn't like this guy."

"He," corrected one of the officers. "A woman wouldn't be able to do that much damage."

"I know plenty who could," I replied without looking at the speaker.

"Not this guy. He was 6'4" when he was upright."

I shrugged, wincing with the pain it caused. I still knew plenty who could. Granted, the guy's size and obvious physical strength narrowed down the _likely_ list of suspects to "mostly men," but there was still the girl...though she obviously couldn't have brought this guy down. Not even with a sledgehammer.

Still. She could have given him a hell of a headache.

Not that he had to worry about that now.


	2. Chapter 2

Back at the station, I listened intently as Lennie and Ed used part of my No. 2 fort to map out the facts known so far. The victim, a trainer named John "Jolly" Roy, Sr., worked for Braeburn in Kentucky for awhile before coming up to New York to work for Gold Meadows. The owner, William Nance, and the manager, Dab Whitney, both attested to the dead man's worth as a friend and genuinely wonderful human being.

The competition questioned, however, wouldn't begin to estimate the length of the list of men who hated "Jolly" Roy. He was a bastard, a son of a bitch, should have been banned from the track, would run a horse into the ground, do anything to win...in short, the response from both sides was pretty much what I would have expected from a racetrack crowd outside of touchy-feely stables one might find in California or Louisville. If one were extraordinarily lucky.

"Whitney seemed pretty dodgy to me," Ed observed, "and his only alibi is his wife."

"I don't trust that stable girl," Lennie replied, echoing my own thoughts as he glanced at his notes. "What's her name...Sheri Cochran. She was way too anxious for all of us to be gone."

"You don't think that's her youth?" Ed countered. "She's just a kid, who's seen a dead body for the first time. I wouldn't think it's strange that she wants the whole thing to be over. Besides, no way could she have lifted that hammer high enough _and_ swung it hard enough to incapacitate someone of Roy's size."

Lennie glanced at me. "Didn't she tell us she didn't see the body?"

Ed sat up a little straighter. "Philips said she was one of the first on the scene-- Whitney said she looked into the stall when he led the horse out to hand off to her."

Lennie gave Ed a half-shrug, half-smirk, and the two took off to pick up Sheri Cochran.

-#-

I wasn't privy to their interview with the stable girl; Lennie had to get me home before Jack. As it was, we only beat him by a few minutes. I was in the shower when he came in. I heard him call out my name only seconds after climbing under the steaming water. I yelled back.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice growing louder as he neared the bathroom door.

"Yeah," I lied. God, did I hurt.

The son of a bitch opened the bathroom door. I shut off the water, wrapped the shower curtain around myself and glared at him incredulously. "Care to tell me where you've been today?" he asked casually, sitting down on the closed commode. He looked so goddamned at ease, like he was questioning someone he had dead to rights.

"Can I get out of the shower first?" I asked sarcastically.

"Be my guest," he replied, crossing his arms.

Woodson would be the first to tell you that I don't bully well. He'd also be the first to tell you that my stubborn County Waterford temper has gotten me into more trouble than my job. Correction-- make that my former job. If this SOB was going to try to bully me into cowering in the corner like a misbehaved child, I was going to show him I wasn't one to be pushed around. I flung back the shower curtain, spraying water droplets all over his thousand-dollar-suit and the rest of the bathroom, and stepped out of the tub like an actress stepping out to take a bow. I am such a moron.

The combination of sweeping back the curtain and lifting my leg to step out of the shower seized up my back and shot lightning through every nerve. First I hit the wall, then I hit the floor, tears coursing out of my eyes but unable to make a sound.

Jack was down with me in a heartbeat, his arm around my spasming back, the other hand turning my face toward his as the lights began to blur. I grasped at his forearm, gasping to speak as he told me not to try to talk. I settled for whimpering.

The whole world was hazy for awhile as he carried me into the bedroom and laid me gingerly on the bed; when the fog of pain lifted a little, I discovered him still beside me, one of my enervated hands between both of his, having a little life rubbed back into it as he waited for me to rejoin him in the real world. I looked up at him without moving my head.

"Well?" he asked.

I just grinned at him. To his credit, he grinned back. "Feeling better?" he asked.

I blinked. "I can't nod. But I'm better."

"Really." He fixed me with a piercing glare that was startlingly familiar; Jonesey had the same look, and before I met Jack, I'd thought Jonesey had it patented. I'd never tell Jonesey, but Jack did it even better. "Care to tell me where you were today?"

"No. Wanna tell me how you know I wasn't here?"

The glare softened to a smile. "I came home for lunch."

So Lennie's spy at Hogan Place had missed one. Lennie would be so disappointed.

"Look, I know it's none of my business--"

I started laughing, which hurt like hell on toast. After what we'd been through and done together, from me saving his life to him getting me through physical therapy up to this moment-- me, lying wet and naked on his bed-- and now he was going to claim that my life was none of his business. "Too late for that, Jack."

He shook his head. "I've put a lot of work into you. I hate to see you screw that up."

"Yeah." I pushed at the bed under me, testing. I wasn't going to be moving for awhile.

Jack knew it, too. He lifted me enough to get me under the covers-- miraculously, hurting me very little-- and brought in a towel to dry my hair. "You want me to bring you dinner?" he asked as he finished mopping at my tangles.

"I already ate."

"Where?"

I grinned at him again. "I'm not telling you where I was, Jack. If I want to go out and finish off my back--"

He waved off the rest. "If you want to be stupid, who am I to stop you."

I slept very soundly that night, and the next morning when I got up and wandered to the kitchen, there was a key to the apartment lying on the kitchen counter.

-#-

I called a cab and went straight to the 27th precinct.

Lennie lit up when he saw me, and smiled that great comfortable smile of his. "Look who's been set loose on her own."

"Frightening, isn't it?" I sat in the chair Ed offered me. "What's new with the dead trainer?"

Ed sighed. "Nothing new. No new suspects, no holes in Whitney's alibi, no way Sheri Cochran could have done the deed. We're just not catching a break on this one."

"We have confirmed that Roy was a definite son of a bitch," Lennie said affably, "but we haven't been able to confirm that he was doping his horses like the other guys said." 

The "other guys" being competitors, I hadn't put much hopes in the idea that they would prove that particular accusation, but you never know. I was disappointed that it was another dead end. "Well, I'm not too surprised...I wouldn't think you'd have to drug a Dancer colt."

"What do you mean?" Ed asked.

"That colt's from Native Dancer lines...he could run like a hurricane. And had attitude like one, too. Good quality to be at that track," Lennie supplied. Then he scowled to himself and grabbed his notes. "What if you were drugging him to slow him down, though?" He found what he was looking for: the financial statements for Gold Meadow. "They're doing pretty good...and this colt is their best runner."

Ed glanced back and forth between us. "So the owner might not be in on it. But Roy could have been doing it all on his own."

Lennie agreed. He handed Ed a racing program. "The competition's backyard has beens and never will bes. That would make this colt an easy favorite."

"So you bet on the competition, slow down the favorite, and cash in," Ed nodded. "Okay. We've got a good case against the dead guy..."

"For doping horses," Lennie said. "That's hardly a reason to kill a guy...wouldn't you just turn him in?"

I nodded.

"Lends more credence to your theory that it was the girl," Ed replied. "She seems awfully attached to that horse...could be she didn't think about just turning him in. Maybe she caught him at it, and just reacted."

"But she isn't strong enough to kill him...that's why you guys had to give up on her as the killer, right?" I asked. Ed nodded.

Lennie mused for a moment, then turned again to me. "It was pretty obvious the horse was a Dancer colt, right?" I nodded. "And what are his get famous for?"

"Whirlwinds," I replied. "Fast and furious." And then I stopped and shook my head. I'm a moron, and sometimes also an idiot. "Son of a bitch."

"Okay, would you two railbirds care to clue me in?" Ed asked good-naturedly.

"They get the 'furious' part of that 'fast and furious' sometimes, too."

The light went on immediately over Ed's head.

"Bingo," Lennie told him. "Let's go get that girl." They both rose immediately. "Want to come?" he asked me.

I shook my head. "But I'd love to observe the questioning."

He nodded, and they took off. I managed to snag another cab and headed for Hogan Place, but Jack was in court (big surprise), so I wound up at the precinct, just waiting for Lennie and Ed to get back. Retirement's a bitch when you hate waiting. Didn't have to wait long, though-- I finally got my fort done when they came hauling in with the stable girl in tow. I waited until they were settled, then slipped in with Lt. Van Buren and ADA Southerlyn, Jack's newest assistant. The man went through assistants like most people go through underwear...literally, if what I'd heard was true. I tried not to grin at her as Van Buren introduced us. The poor girl would have no idea why.

But Lennie was settling down beside the teenager now, and the show was about to begin. They did the usual preliminary dance, why she was here, why they were still questioning her; then Lennie got down to business. His voice over the speaker was so cool, you'd think he was telling the truth.

"Sheri, I've gotta tell you, you've really had us going. But it's over. We know what happened. We've got proof."

She looked up at him with bold brown eyes. Obviously, her resolve had hardened in the past couple of days. "Then why am I here? You know I couldn't have done it. The other officers said so. I'm not big enough."

"Not big enough to bring down a man Roy's size," Ed agreed.

"But we know that's not what happened," Lennie said. "You didn't have to bring him down. He was already dead when you brought that sledgehammer into the stall."

The girl jumped back like she'd been shocked. I have to say, I hadn't expected her to crack that quickly.

She started to shake. "No he wasn't! I did do it! I killed him!" Tears streaked her face and she clutched at Lennie's sleeve. "Please, you've gotta believe me. I did kill him!"

Lennie sighed and patted the girl's frantic hand. "Sheri, it'll be all right. Trust me."

"No, they'll kill him," she sobbed, turning from one detective to the other. "Please, they will. You can't let them. You have to believe me--"

Beside me, Southerlyn said, "She needs her lawyer." 

"Or her mother," Van Buren drawled.

"No one's gonna kill him," Lennie assured the terrified girl. "Just tell me what happened, and we'll take care of it." That at least was true; the colt was the farm's bread and butter. This would be written off as a nasty accident, but nothing worth killing the horse over. Not that his terrified young handler would have been thinking about that, finding a dead man in his stall.

Her trembling didn't stop, but her tears did subside as she searched Lennie's eyes. She'd definitely grown up at the track, one way or the other: she looked for a lie on his face, and didn't find one. The kid would be all right, I thought.

"He was dead when I found him," she said quietly. He nodded, and she continued. "He was gonna drug the Dancer, I know he was. There was a syringe in the straw."

"Where is it now?" Ed asked her.

"I threw it in the manure pile," Sheri replied. No wonder it hadn't been found. "He must have hurt him, or he never would have-- I mean, the Dancer's kicked before, but not--" She stopped, visibly reordering her thoughts. "The Dancer killed him. I could see-- see the shape of his hoof in Jolly's head." The events began to play out a little more clearly for us as the girl confirmed our suspicions-- he stuck the horse, the horse knocked the syringe out of this hand, and when he bent down to retrieve it...wham. She shivered. "I knew I couldn't leave it like that. I couldn't let anyone know what had happened. So I got the sledgehammer, and I..."

"Disguised the wound," Ed offered gently.

She nodded. "Then I took the Dancer out to the wash rack, and I hosed him down, and then I took him to the track so his hooves would get muddy, and then I put him back in his stall and called the police."

After a few more minutes of tying, the loose ends seemed caught and Lennie emerged to speak with us. None of us doubted that we'd finally heard the real story.

"I don't think we need to pursue this child too stringently," Southerlyn replied when they began discussing Sheri's hampering of the investigation. "It's not like a real killer was out stalking the streets because she did this. I'll talk to McCoy about going easy on her."

"With all due respect," Lennie said, turning from the new ADA to me, "I think you might be more of an influence there."

"Me?" I squeaked. I snapped my mouth shut immediately; I hate it when I sound like that. I hate getting caught flatfooted. But his statement couldn't have surprised me more.

He just looked at me, in that infuriatingly knowing way he has.

I know when to give up. I'll leave arguing with Lennie to Jack. Lord knows nobody else should want the job. Nobody else is qualified, I think.

So I went home and waited for Jack. He finally came sailing in around seven, tossing his jacket and briefcase aside and sparing me a quick "Hello" before heading to the kitchen. He came back out with two beers, handing me one before settling on the sofa next to me. "Rough day?" he asked me. "You look like you've got something on your mind."

I sketched out the past few days' events for him. He only interrupted me once, when he found out I'd spent an entire day wandering a murder scene at a racetrack-- he knew I'd been out, but he hadn't known I had been quite so asinine about it-- but shut up quick enough when I pointed out that I'd paid for it. I ended by asking him to go easy on the girl. He sat thoughtfully for a few minutes. Finally, he asked, "And you don't think it sends the wrong message to this young woman if we let her off easy when she obstructed a police investigation and diverted manpower from places where it could have been doing some good?"

"I wouldn't ask if I thought that, Jack," I replied levelly. That was true-- this girl was not destined to be a hardened criminal, no way in hell. I knew that just as surely as I knew my boys. There was nothing I could tell him about his job-- but there was nothing he could tell me about mine. I might no longer have the ability to do it...but I still had the knowledge.

And he knew that. He gave half a nod, and that was that. I marveled a little at how quickly it had all sorted out-- the whole case, the girl's future, the horse's, how it all tied up with a neat little bow. He must have been watching the whole thing in my face. "What's wrong? Too easy? Need more of a challenge?"

"It certainly doesn't have the long-lasting ramifications of political intrigue," I replied, leaning my head back on the couch. "But that is entirely fine by me."

"Sometimes, simple is what we need," Jack agreed, leaning back beside me. Neither of us spoke for a long time; we just sat there, drank our beers, and watched the sky get dark over the city.


End file.
